


the hardest part

by illimerence



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bi-curious Cullen Rutherford, Cullen Rutherford Has Issues, Cullen Rutherford has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Hurt/Comfort, Lyrium Withdrawal, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Other, bi-curiousity, very light dom/sub undertones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:55:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28589895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illimerence/pseuds/illimerence
Summary: Cullen can't sleep. The Inquisitor helps.
Relationships: Inquisitor/Cullen Rutherford, Lavellan/Cullen Rutherford
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	the hardest part

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is a gift for my good friend ollie, who wanted cullen getting a good night's sleep. inqiusitor lochrian lavellan is their creation.  
> i recommend listening to the song [sleep by my chemical romance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSAoJJzVXYY) while reading this. it's very much a cullen song.

Cullen sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck, where the worst of the pain was.

The mountain air was doing nothing at all to help the near-constant tension headache he was slowly realising would probably never leave him entirely. Rather, the ice wind dug its fingers into the base of his skull and squeezed, making it worse.

He rolled his neck on his shoulders from habit, even knowing that it wouldn’t help. He could smell the lyrium in his kit, sharp and clean – he wouldn’t need much, not even a half-dose, and then the headache would clear, and maybe he’d be able to get more than an hour of sleep. Maybe he’d be able to stomach more than a few bites of bread, and the blur at the edges of his vision would clear, and his hands would stop shaking… or maybe even that small, not-quite-half-dose would flood his system with that clear, calm sense of power he still remembered so strongly, along with the desperate craving for more of it.

Maybe he would take another half-dose a couple of hour later, and a full dose half a day after that; and yes, he would be sleeping, and yes, he would be eating, and he would feel strong and sharp and capable of being what the Inquisition needed him to be… but that person wouldn’t be him.

He remembered only too well what the lyrium did to him.

Maker, but he missed it.

He closed his eyes and took another deep breath, hoping that when he opened them again the words on the page before him would be more than a dark smear across the vellum. They weren’t.

He didn’t have time for this. The Inquisition didn’t have time for this. He wasn’t good enough like this – he should be taking it – he shouldn’t take it – he should –

He slammed his fist on the surface of his desk, hard enough to rattle. A few scrolls sitting precariously on the edge of the desk toppled to the floor, one of them rolling across the floor of his office, stopping at the toe of a boot by his door. A boot?

Cullen looked up. His office door was open, and Inquisitor Lochrian Lavellan stood with their hand on the doorknob.

“Maker!” Cullen exclaimed. “I – I’m sorry, Inquisitor, I didn’t hear –“

“I can come back later,” the Inquisitor said, that peculiar little half-smile on their face. “Once you’ve dealt with whatever it is your desk has done that’s made you so angry with it.”

Cullen wanted to laugh at that. He would have, in another time. But his head was being slowly crushed by an invisible vice, and he hadn’t slept in longer than he cared to admit. The most he could muster was a smile that didn’t meet his eyes.

“Very good, Inquisitor,” he said, voice dry. “Is there something that needs my attention?”

Any other time he would have made the appropriate small talk. He _liked_ the Inquisitor, which is more than he had expected when he met them: mages usually got his hackles up, and Lavellan was no exception, with all their talk of freedom and equal footing. Right up until they’d thrown that half-smile his way on the training field outside of Haven and told him that if he had a lecture prepared they’d love to hear it.

His stomach had turned over. Not in an unpleasant way, either. At that point, only a few short days after Lavellan had stepped out of the fade, before everyone knew just how important they would be, Cullen hadn’t known a thing about them – other than that they were a mage, and one of _those_ mages, at that. He was still stumbling over pronouns and titles, then, unused to how little Lavellan cared about that sort of thing. He’d called them ‘lady Herald’ at one point, and had to excuse himself immediately to go find somewhere private where he could be paralysed with embarrassment alone.

But the Inquisitor hadn’t cared. Still didn’t care. Half the visiting dignitaries in Skyhold had no idea the Inquisitor wasn’t a woman, and Lavellan seemed to be… not flattered, exactly, but amused by the whole thing. Not offended at all, as Cullen would be.

Cullen knew that Solas used some odd Elvhen word in place of ‘he’ or ‘she’ to refer to the Inquisitor, but he couldn’t wrap his tongue around it. So he resorted to ‘they,’ even though he knew that many others called Lavellan ‘he,’ and that Lavellan was fine with that. There was just something about them that made Cullen trip over masculine pronouns.

It may have been because of how much they reminded him of Solona. Or it may have been because Cullen often found himself lost for words around them, suddenly aware of how his heart was beating, unable to look them in the eye for fear that they would see – something there that he didn’t want them to see.

Cullen had never felt like that around a man before.

“There is, actually,” the Inquisitor said now. “Something that requires your immediate attention, in fact. It’s quite urgent.”

Cullen’s head throbbed. He was starting to see little black splotches in his peripheral vision. He would do this, though – whatever it took, for the Inquisition.

“Yes? What is it?”

The inquisitor looked at him for a long moment, their head tilted to one side, still smiling in that way of theirs. Then: “Your bed.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your bed. I’ve noticed you’ve been neglecting it – you almost fell asleep in your porridge this morning, and if your eyes got any redder I’d be concerned about what kind of lyrium you’d been taking.”

_I haven’t,_ Cullen didn’t say, because he wasn’t ready for the Inquisitor to know that. Not yet. Cassandra knew, after all, and that was enough.

“Honestly, Inquisitor, you hardly need to worry –“

“-but I do,” the Inquisitor interrupted. They stepped into his office fully, closing the door quietly behind them, and crouched to pick up the scrolls scattered across the floor, putting them back in their place on Cullen’s crowded desk. “I know you haven’t been sleeping, Cullen.”

Cullen vaguely registered that – the use of his first name. He’d not heard the Inquisitor call him that before. Something to think on later, when he wasn’t so fucking tired. When he could actually think.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “We’ve all been sleeping poorly, these days.”

“None so poorly as you.”

“I’m sure that’s not true –“

“Cullen.” His name again. “We need you at your best. And that means well rested. Fed, too, but… well. One thing at a time, yes?”

Did the Inquisitor see everything? “I’m sorry to disappoint, but it’s not that simple.”

“No, I know that.” The Inquisitor leaned lightly against Cullen’s desk, arms folded across their chest. Smiling, smiling. “And I know that under normal circumstances, you’d never let a mage help you. But these aren’t normal circumstances.”

Cullen frowned. “You mean you want to use magic on me.”

The Inquisitor shrugged lightly. “I want you to get some rest. And – I’d like it if you trusted me. To help.”

Cullen’s chest tightened with an emotion he didn’t have a name for. The last time he trusted a mage… a thin veneer of blue light flickered across his vision, and he shook his head violently to clear it. Best not to think of that. Not now.

“Inquisitor –“

“Lochrian, please.”

Cullen swallowed. “I don’t know if I –“

“You don’t have to call me Lochrian out there. After this, I’ll go about my Inquisitor business, and you can go about your Commander business, and we needn’t complicate that. But right now, I’m Lochrian.”

“Alright,” Cullen agreed. “Lochrian.” He took another steadying breath. “You have to understand. It’s nothing to do with you, I just don’t… magic isn’t something I can…”

Lochrian’s expression softened, something almost sad in their eyes. “I’m aware of your past. Not of the specifics, but I realise you have cause to be wary of magic.” Cullen said nothing. His head was pounding, and the splotches at the edges of his vision were growing, stretching. “But you can’t keep going like this,” Lochrian said. “Please. Let me help you.”

The blue flicker again. _This isn’t then,_ Cullen admonished himself. _You’re not there. You’re not that person anymore._ And then, creeping in as it always did: _But what if..?_

Cullen grit his teeth, turned away. “I… want to.”

“Okay,” Lochrian said, like it was simple. “Up, then. Up the ladder.” Cullen hesitated. “That’s an order, Commander.” And it was automatic – Cullen stood, without realising it. Lochrian looked at him, visibly pleased – caught Cullen’s eye – and something unspoken passed between them. Something that settled warmly in Cullen’s stomach like a strong drink.

“Alright,” Cullen said. “Alright.” And he started up the ladder to the loft.

He lit the candle on the crate he was using as a makeshift nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed as Lochrian pulled themself through the hole in the floor and climbed to their feet. They looked about, at the single chest of personal items Cullen had managed to rescue from Haven, at the vines crawling across the walls, at the holes in the roof. They raised their eyebrows at Cullen. “Why haven’t those been fixed? We have the resources.”

“Just… haven’t gotten around to it,” Cullen said.

“Right,” Lochrian said. They gestured toward the chest in the corner. “I assume you have sleep clothes in there?”

“I, um. I usually just sleep in my clothes.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No wonder you’re not sleeping. Get undressed.”

“I –“

“I won’t look,” Lochrian said, a note of amusement in their voice. “Go on.”

“Yes, Ser,” Cullen mumbled, and began the arduous task of taking his armour off. “I really should oil my plate mail, before I sleep…”

“I can take care of it,” Lochrian said. “Are you decent?”

Cullen looked down at himself. He’d changed into a loose-fitting undershirt, the longest he could find – he didn’t have any dedicated sleep clothes. “I suppose.”

Lochrian turned back around. Their eyes flicked briefly to Cullen’s legs, but Cullen didn’t feel like he was being given a once-over. “Good. Into bed. Go on.”

“I feel like I’m about five years old again,” Cullen joked. “What happens next – you tell me off for it being past my bedtime?”

“Well past it,” Lochrian said wryly. “Come on, under the covers. Good man.”

Cullen found himself startled when Lochrian sat lightly on the edge of the bed by him. He should have expected it, but for some reason, after everything else, this was the thing that surprised him. It felt strangely intimate. So much so that Cullen thought he might have been made uncomfortable by it, had he not been dizzy with exhaustion and withdrawal.

“I’m going to cast a sleep spell on you,” Lochrian murmured. Their voice was always so soft, even when they were casting judgement as Inquisitor, or on the battlefield. “You won’t feel anything, and you’ll sleep deeply. You won’t dream. Are you still okay with that?”

Cullen swallowed. This mage was about to cast a spell on him, leaving him helpless – but he was so tired, so fucking tired…

“Yes,” Cullen said. “I’m okay with it.”

Lochrian smiled at him again, no sly half-smile this one, but a full smile that crinkled the corners of their eyes and made Cullen feel warm through. Then they lifted two fingers to the centre of Cullen’s forehead and said, “Sleep.”

Cullen did.


End file.
